Assisted Dying

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I accept wholly the point my right hon. Friend makes. I think a lot of the people I am concerned about, and expressing a worry about, are deeply loved by their children but do not want to put an undue burden on them. I am not saying that those children want to hasten their death or anything like that. I do not think that is often the case, although occasionally it might be.

I do think that conscientious and frail elderly people will feel that they ought to avoid being a burden, and they will feel a pressure to end their lives prematurely as a result. I would say that we ought not to impose such a burden on vulnerable people nearing the end of their lives. The penalty that would come from doing so would be significantly greater than the considerable benefits we have heard set out in the debate.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I will make a bit more progress.

In setting out this view, I am mindful of the stern instruction we all received last week from the National Secular Society, which wrote:

“Dire warnings about the coercion of disabled, elderly, sick or the depressed can mask true motivations for opposing a change in the law…disguising religion objections as secular concerns, rather than seeking ways to mitigate potential risks of legalising assisted dying, opponents can exaggerate the risks, weaponising them to spread fear.”

The National Secular Society will probably regard me as one of the guilty parties here, but I do not think the concerns I am expressing are apparent only to religious people. Disabled people’s organisations have been very clear—in the interests of all the people they represent, and certainly not on any religious grounds—that legalising assisted dying would be a deeply damaging change. I think they are right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) and to speak in the debate. The opening speech from the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) was extremely sensitive. I speak not on behalf of the all-party parliamentary humanist group, of which I am a secretary—I draw the House’s attention to that—although I note that its position is not only to support this motion, but to extend assisted dying legislation to those who are incurably and intolerably suffering. I put that out there for further discussion, perhaps at a later date. I also speak, not on behalf of the 189 of my constituents who signed the petition, but in sympathy with them, and I have also had many people write to me from the other side.

I spoke in the debate on 23 January 2020, which was secured by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), in one of my first contributions in this place. I still support a Government-backed inquiry, but perhaps we need to be moving a bit quicker, because it was two and a half years ago when we had that debate. This House should always proceed carefully, but we should also be careful not to get too far away from the public.

In time, I believe a change in the law along the lines as the one proposed in this debate will come to be seen as natural as previous changes of law on other moral topics, whether it is universal suffrage, gay sex or equal marriage. Those things are now things we accept and take for granted in this place and this country; in due course we will come to think of assisted dying in the same way. There will be some who are never reconciled to it, but I believe that is where the country is headed. I note, as I did in that debate two and half years ago, that the existing law is profoundly unsatisfactory for those dying, their families, the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions alike.

This is fundamentally about bodily autonomy, and about the pain and suffering that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer)—who was not even here two and a half years ago—drew to our attention. It is not as rare as people think. It is not unique. We hear about those cases because people are brave and they talk about them, but there are lots of people who have painful and unpleasant deaths. There is still an omertà about death in this country. The more we talk about it, the more we will open up and move forward as a society. The reality is that our constituents are having to go abroad. There is more than one person per week going to Switzerland, often without their relatives, for the reasons we have heard. There is an inequity there based on the cost of going to Switzerland—not everybody can go—and it is earlier than they would like. We need to move forward urgently on this, in line with the shifts in professional medical opinion that we have also heard about.

Turning to arguments about faith, which we have not heard too explicitly today, I do respect the sincerity of people who make faith-based arguments here. However, many of us do not have faith. Increasingly, that is the case for many of our constituents. We can see that in the census. Many people who do have faith, such as the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), do not necessarily feel the same way.

As I say, do as you wish by yourself and your God, and vote accordingly, but recognise that those of us in the opposite position are motivated also by the deepest humanity and love. I heard that point most profoundly from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I heard his speech three years ago, before I was a Member in this place. It is still clearly as painful an issue for him today as it was then. That goes to show that we can do so much good by addressing it.

Finally, people going through this issue now do not have the luxury of time. We have taken too much time already. The public interest in this topic in both senses of the word is clearly obvious. The interest in this House is obvious. It is time to look at what more we can do. We must dedicate time in the House to actually debating what a new law could and would do, and at some point—very soon—we should have a vote on it.